


Hangover Cures

by walkingsaladshooter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: "Alcohol. Interferes. With your suppressants.", (This is more lighthearted than these tags are implying lol), Alcohol, Alcohol as coping mechanism, Alpha Rey (Star Wars), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Drunk Kylo Ren, F/M, Get Your Shit Together Kylo, Omega Ben Solo, Omega Kylo Ren, The T rating is only for alcohol and swears can you BELIEVE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter
Summary: Before he can say anything, she plunks a liter bottle of water and a bag of pretzels onto the step next to him. Then she holds out a single banana, which Kylo, vaguely bewildered, takes. “Get yourself together,” she mutters, and continues up the stairs.“Are you sure I don’t know you?” he asks. She’s being—familiar, he thinks.“You saw me in the hall last night.” She doesn’t look at him. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember. Now sober up. Seeing you in this state is making me crazy.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 37
Kudos: 271
Collections: AU - Neighbours / Roommates, CH - Dominant Rey





	Hangover Cures

**Author's Note:**

> In which Kylo is a bit of a mess and meets his very pretty, very exasperated alpha neighbor under less than ideal circumstances.
> 
> (Mind the tags re: alochol content; it's treated fairly light-heartedly but just fyi.)
> 
> Thank you to crossingwinter for the beta-read! <3

Kylo wakes up and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Possibly ever again. Death seems a much more favorable option than the pain scraping inside his skull.

Rubbing his eyes, he takes stock. His head is pounding. His throat is painfully dry. His body feels heavy and used. His mouth tastes like something died in it, and he’s definitely still a little drunk.

But he’s in his apartment, albeit sprawled on the couch. That’s something.

Sitting up is an ordeal, but he makes it. He has to rest a minute, though. It gives him the opportunity to run a palm roughly over the stubble on his cheeks. There’s a filmy patch of dried drool at the corner of his mouth.

He wants a cigarette. Or a breakfast sandwich. Probably both.

Somehow he gets his jeans back on and his feet in his slippers. He shuffles out of his apartment, down the hall, and out onto the front stoop. The pale morning light lances into his eyes. “Fuck,” he mutters elegantly. He sits on the steps, squints his eyes hard, and clumsily lights a cigarette.

Four drags in, he lets his head hang back, eyes closed. He’s starting to feel mostly sober. The smoke feels harsh and familiar in his throat, and he only flinches a little when someone opens the door behind him.

“That won’t help, you know.”

Opening his eyes is not on the extremely short list of Kylo’s current interests. “Do you smoke?” he asks the mystery person. He sounds like hell.

A pause. “No,” the voice says. It’s quite a nice voice, considering that all sounds currently make his head throb.

“Then how would you know.” He dares to squint open his eyes and peer up.

She’s shockingly pretty. She’s also upside-down, since his head is hanging back. It makes his stomach turn over, so he closes his eyes again. He can still see her clear eyes and her freckles and her frown, though.

“You need water. And electrolytes.”

“Who are you?” he asks. He’s lifted his head and carefully turned sideways, so he can look up at her now.

Her frown deepens. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

She scoffs—actually scoffs—and then rolls her eyes. “I live across the hall from you.” And she stomps down the stairs. He catches a whiff of something that smells way too pretty for him to be processing when he feels this shitty. Maybe her perfume. Or maybe—

“Impossible.” Kylo flicks ash off the end of his cigarette. She stops at the bottom of the stairs and turns to look back at him. “I’d remember you.”

She laughs. “Right.”

“I mean it.” He stares at her. Tries to suss it out, even though his brain still feels like its gears are all gummed up.

Her humorless smile fades and she levels a firm gaze at him. “I’m on good blockers,” she says. More quietly. And she turns on her heel and stalks off down the sidewalk.

Kylo stretches and lies back on the stairs, letting his cigarette dangle from his lips.

Well. At least he didn’t have to ask.

He’s still on the steps, feeling only the slightest scrap better, when she comes back with a full grocery bag over her shoulder. Before he can say anything, she plunks a liter bottle of water and a bag of pretzels onto the step next to him. Then she holds out a single banana, which Kylo, vaguely bewildered, takes. “Get yourself together,” she mutters, and continues up the stairs.

“Are you sure I don’t know you?” he asks. She’s being—familiar, he thinks.

“You saw me in the hall last night.” She doesn’t look at him. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember. Now sober up. Seeing you in this state is making me crazy.” And then she’s gone with the rest of her groceries, banging the door behind her.

  
  
  
  


He spends the rest of the morning slowly drinking the water and working his way through the bag of pretzels. The banana had been first, soft and sweet and easy on his stomach. After a few hours of careful progress, he’s actually starting to feel reasonably human again and can manage a shower without wanting to curl up and die on the floor of the tub.

It’s there, under the hot water, that thin cracks of last night open in his mind.

He has a memory of the girl across the hall. Just a flash, like a photograph. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is soft. It must be from last night because god knows she’d only looked at him hard this morning. Kylo’s stomach sinks with the indistinct feeling he said something profoundly stupid, profoundly awful, or both.

His hair is still lightly dripping on the shoulders of his t-shirt when he goes into the hall and knocks on the door opposite his.

When she opens the door, she immediately crosses her arms. “You seem better.”

“Minutely.” He shoves his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. “I’m sorry for whatever dumb shit I said last night. I’m Kylo.”

“Really.”

“Yes?”

She smirks. “Okay. Since you probably don’t remember, I’m Rey.”

Rey.  _ Rey _ . He is an asshole and an idiot, an idiot asshole, because how did he forget that. He remembers a flash of leaning against her doorframe here, limp and smiling soppily, sing-songing that name over and over because the way it felt in his mouth was luxurious.

He feels his face start to burn. “Ah. Right.”

Rey arches one eyebrow. “Remembering?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“You were soused. It’s—fine.”

“Not really.”

“No.”

Something tugs at the edge of his attention. Something profound. He wrinkles his nose, trying to place it, to chase it and name it. “Sorry, I’m—” It’s nice. Soothing. It makes his head feel better.

Rey’s eyes dart across his face, then widen.

Oh. Her door is open. And sure, she’s on blockers, but that’s her apartment, which is full of her scent, which is wafting out now. Behind the blockers it’s still too faint for him to quite describe, but it’s like a thumb pressing right into the tightest knot in his shoulders. Sharp and sweet and delicious and promising things he needs to make him feel better.

“Right,” he mumbles. “Anyway. Sorry.”

“Right.” Rey nods. “See you, Kylo.”

And she shuts the door in his face.

  
  
  
  


Kylo is good at pretending he’s lying to himself, but not so good at actually lying to himself. So he pretends he’s browsing the tiny garden section at the grocery store on a whim, but he knows exactly why he’s here.

He picks up a tiny pot filled with bright yellow flowers and puts it in his basket.

When he brings his groceries home, he sets the flowers in front of Rey’s door.

As the week carries on, he doesn’t see her again until Thursday, when he’s just coming home from work, covered in drywall dust and sporting a soon-to-be-magnificent bruise on his jaw where one of the other builders had accidentally whacked him with a fucking one-by-eight. Rey is in the entryway at the mail boxes, flipping through her mail. “Hey,” is his brilliant choice of words.

She looks up. “Hey.” Her gaze flicks down the length of him and back up. Maybe a little slowly. He swallows, feeling his skin heat. “Long day?”

“Average,” he says with a shrug, but even as he speaks her brow furrows and she steps closer, holding her mail to her chest. His breath catches as she gets right up in his personal space, this slim alpha who’s a head shorter than him, and glares up at his face, not looking him in the eye. “Um.”

“What happened to your face?” she asks. She sounds pissed.

“Accident.” This close—she’s seriously just under his chin—and being angry, he can smell her more clearly than before. Still safe behind her blockers, but it’s there, and it makes him clench his hands into fists at his sides. She smells—sharp and clear. Not like cleanser, but like peppermint or pine or lemon. “At work. Dumbass with a plank of wood.”

She huffs and steps away, looking back down at her mail. The space between them lets him breathe a little better. “You’re kind of a mess, aren’t you?” she asks.

No denying it, especially given the first impression he made. “Yeah.”

“Mm.” She pulls one envelope out of her stack. “Well. You should really consider getting yourself together. Also, they put this in my mailbox.” Rey holds the envelope out to him. When he reaches to take it, she holds onto it a second too long, finally meeting his eyes. “See you,  _ Kylo _ ,” she says, not quite grinning, then turns and is gone down the hall before he can react.

He hears her apartment door close as he looks down at the envelope where  _ Ben Solo, Apt 1C _ is clearly written.

Shit.

It’s cowardly, but he avoids her after that. When he’s about to leave for work the next morning, he hears her in the hall and waits until she’s gone before he comes out. He thanks whatever probably-nonexistent god abandoned him years ago for being a jackass that he doesn’t run into her when he comes home. And after work on Saturday, it’s easy to take up the contractor’s offer to take the crew out for drinks because that’s more time away from the building and less likely to see her and make an ass of himself.

Which goes to shit, predictably, when he knocks on her door the second he gets home.

Rey frowns when she opens the door. “God. You smell like a distillery.”

“I’m not blackout,” he says, quite proud of not slurring his words at all. “And I need to apologize.”

“Really.”

“Yes. For last week. When I was.”

“You already apologized for that.”

He holds up his hands in a shrug. And leaves them there. He thinks the pose makes him look good-natured. “I’m nothing if not persistent.”

Rey looks angry again, and it makes something very deep in him contract unpleasantly. He drops his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, tongue running away with him. “For whatever it is. However I’m pissing you off. I’m sorry. I’m good at that—pissing people off. But I don’t want to piss you off. I want you to like me.”

She covers her eyes with her hand and mutters something that sounds like _ “Jesus fucking christ.” _ With a huge sigh, she pushes him towards his own door. Which means she touches him. Her palms full on his chest, which makes him yelp in a very undignified way. That feels good. Feels right. She should touch him more. “Go in your apartment,” she growls. “Drink a glass of water. I’ll be right there.”

His mind turns, trying to process. “You will?”

“Yes. Jesus.  _ Go, _ Ben.”

Dizzily, from both the double-whiskeys and the pleasure of knowing she’s on her way, he fumbles his key into the door and shimmies into his apartment.

He’s happy to do as she says, pouring himself a glass of water from the tap and standing in the kitchen with the lights off, drinking it down. He’s so thirsty. Of course she knew he was thirsty. She knows everything. She brought him a banana when he was hungover. She’s perfect.

The lights turn on in the hall and he perks up. Leaving the glass on the counter, he goes to the doorway. Rey, Rey, Rey is there with an armful of things and a line creased between her brows. “Go sit down,” she says, and Kylo nods, slipping ahead of her and flopping down onto the couch in the living room.

When she sits down next to him, she smells like spaghetti sauce and miracles, which he tells her. The corner of her mouth quirks up in a small smile. He likes that. He’d like to kiss that. He’d like to make her smile all the time. “Well I was making spaghetti when you knocked on my door.” She doesn’t mention the miracles, which he thinks is a shame.

Kylo presses his eyes closed and thinks hard. He wants to get this right. He’s not blackout drunk, he’ll remember this tomorrow, but he is very drunk, and he doesn’t want to say the wrong words if he can help it. “What did I say?” he asks. “Last week. I still can’t remember.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.” Something nudges against the back of his hand. “Here.”

Opening his eyes, Kylo sees she’s giving him a cup of orange juice. On the coffee table in front of them are two peeled hard-boiled eggs and—

“Are those gummy vitamins?”

“Yes. Drink all the juice, eat both eggs, and take the vitamins.”

He laughs. It’s more like a giggle. “Yes ma’am.”

Even though he’s very drunk and giggling while sipping orange juice, he doesn’t miss that she stiffens when he says that.

Interesting. Veeeerrrrrry interesting.

“What is?”

Oh, shit, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “I still want to know what I said,” he says. Good cover.

Rey sighs. She leans forward with her elbows on her knees. It’s cute, the way that makes her hair fall across her cheek. He wants to tuck it back behind her ear but he makes himself pick up an egg instead. “You were coming home—stumbling, mind you—when I was on my way to the trash room. You asked my name, and when I told you, you said it over and over like it was your favorite damn word.”

“It is,” he says around a mouthful of egg, before he can stop himself.

She tucks back her hair (oh he really should’ve done it for her) and he sees her cheek flush. It’s so cute. She’s so fucking cute and pretty and beautiful. “And when I asked yours, you said it was Ben.”

Oops.

“And you proceeded to tell me that I’m the prettiest alpha you’ve ever seen, and you asked me if you could show me your nest.”

Kylo chokes on the orange juice.

He splutters and Rey whacks him on the back until he coughs. “Fuck. What?”

She’s blushing fiercely now. “You were completely toasted. It’s fine, Ben.”

“Kylo.” He runs a hand over his face. “My legal name is still Ben Solo, but I go by Kylo Ren.”

“Why?”

“Reasons.” He grins. The eggs are making him feel more grounded, but he’s still a bit spinny. Grinning is weirdly easy right now. “But. That—was too forward of me, and I am sorry,” he finishes solemnly.

Rey smiles at him, a real smile, not with teeth but very much a real smile, and it makes him feel like he did something right. “It was kind of sweet. I’m not mad about it.”

“You keep seeming mad at me, though.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not you, exactly. Or, not anything you did, exactly.” She looks down at her hands, so he does, too. Her fingernails are short. It looks like she bites them. Oh. Best not to think about her biting. “Do you know that alcohol interferes with your suppressants?”

“What?”

“Alcohol. Interferes. With your suppressants.” She looks up at him and there it is again, that hard look in her eyes. “You have no idea what you smell like right now, under all that fucking whiskey.”

Kylo opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything.

“It’s so frustrating. You—I want to take care of you. I want to fix everything and make you feel better. But you’re not my—you’re not my _ project. _ You’re an adult. If you want to go out and get plastered, that’s on you, not on me. But I always end up feeling like I need to…” She makes this—this sort of growl in the back of her throat and Kylo tries very hard to ignore the fact that it instantly gives him a semi. “Just, please. Either get yourself together or give me space.”

The way that makes his stomach sink is horrible. His throat goes thick and fuck, is he about to cry? His eyes feel hot. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

Rey shakes her head. “I like you,” she says. Her voice is very quiet but he hears it very loud. “I think you’re sweet under all the…” She waves her hand in his general direction. Yes, correct, he is, in general, an issue. “But I can’t… When I’m around you when you’re like this, I have to take care of you. It hurts if I don’t. And if I’m going to spend time with you, I’m not going to be your babysitter.”

He swallows. “Okay.” He isn’t sure what he means by that. He just wants her to know he’s listening.

Finally, Rey looks at him again. She looks both pissed and sad, and it makes his heart clench. “Finish the juice,” she says, “and take the vitamins. Then go to bed.”

“I will.”

When she stands up, she pauses. She holds out her hand. Bewildered, Kylo takes it and shakes it. Rey laughs, then suddenly says, “Thank you for the flowers,” and then she leaves his apartment and closes the door.

Kylo sits in silence for a while. Then he finishes the juice, takes the vitamins, and goes to bed.

  
  
  
  


In the morning he feels surprisingly normal. A bit of a dull pain throbbing behind his eyes, and his mouth feels fuzzy, but that might be because he didn’t brush his teeth. But otherwise—fine. It’s refreshing.

Kylo brushes his teeth to get rid of the scum feeling, gets dressed, drinks a glass of water, and grabs his cigarettes before heading out for a walk-n-smoke.

A walk-n-smoke is exactly what it sounds like: he goes on a walk, on which he smokes. It’s his preferred form of thinking because he’s learned over the years that the more idle he is physically, the more erratic his brain gets. It’s why he works physical labor now instead of a fucking desk job like he used to, back when he was even more of a mess.

He wanders the neighborhood in long, loping strides, and he thinks.

When he gets back to the building, he knocks on Rey’s door. She answers it quickly enough that a sad part of him wonders if she was waiting for him.

“One more apology,” he says. “For making you uncomfortable. With the whole suppressants thing.”

She bites her lip, looking up at him. “Accepted.”

“And I’ll make the effort to drink less. Or at least sober up before I get home. You live here, too, and I shouldn’t make that hard for you.”

She crosses her arms and smirks. “How charitable of you.” But her tone is light. Playful, even. Maybe the abandoning gods haven’t abandoned him altogether.

“And,” he says, his pulse fluttering because this is the part he’s actually nervous about, “you’ve done a lot to take care of me even though you had no obligation to. So I’d like to do something for you.” He jerks his thumb back over his shoulder. “Let me make you breakfast.”

Rey stares at him for a long moment, but her eyes aren’t hard. The smirk softens into something a little sweeter. “Okay,” she says eventually.

Kylo doesn’t grin, but he absolutely gets a rush of butterflies and he’s not even sorry.

In his kitchen, he digs through the fridge and cabinets, assembling a mise-en-place on the counter and hauling out the cutting board and knives. Rey settles in one of the chairs at the table with the mug of coffee he offered her and watches him start slicing vegetables. “You know what you’re doing with that knife,” she muses.

“I cook a lot.”

“Cooking. Hanging drywall. You’re a man of many talents.”

“Jack of all trades, master of none.” He flashes her a smirk as he starts beating eggs together with salt and pepper and spices. “I try to keep busy as much as I can. Cooking’s good for that.”

Rey sips her coffee. “Why do you drink so much, then? To keep busy?”

She’s not being a smartass. It’s a genuine question. Kylo shrugs noncommittally and pours the eggs into the pan. “It quiets down my brain in a different way.”

“How?”

A glance shows him she’s leaning back in the chair with her feet—stockinged feet, she didn’t put on shoes when she came across the hall—up on the other chair. She’s cradling the coffee mug close to her chest and it’s so sweet and domestic it makes his heart do a funny thing.

“I spend most of my mental efforts,” he says, turning back to the pan, “either obsessing over dumb shit I’ve done and can’t change now, or obsessing over the worry that I’ll fuck up more in the future. Drinking—when you’re drunk, the past doesn’t matter and the future isn’t there. You’re just in the present. Just the exact, brilliant present moment.” He feels his ears start to heat. He sounds dumb. “It’s a relief.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she mumbles into her mug.

“You don’t drink?”

“Not a drop.” She’s quick to add, “I don’t care if other people do. It’s not some moral thing. With you, though, I just… worry.”

“It’s not my healthiest coping mechanism,” he mutters.

“Probably not. And I also don’t love having my hormones messed with.” Kylo flips the omelet with a flick of his wrist and Rey lets out a little whoop; it sparks a grin on his face. “See? That! That was cool as hell. That’s a better use of your time.”

He folds the vegetables into the omelet and lets it start to cook down fully.

“I’m not asking you to stop drinking,” Rey says after a moment. Her voice sounds softer, but Kylo has to keep his focus on the pan for these last few seconds. “That’s always your choice. It just—does seem like you use it that way. As a coping mechanism. And I like you. It makes me wish you took better care of yourself, that’s all. I’m not trying to tell you what to do.”

He carefully slides the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate, cuts it in half, and places the other half on a second plate. Something is building up in his chest and he’s pretty sure he’s going to do something stupid if he doesn’t let it out. So he picks up the plates, turns around, and says, “You can, you know.”

Rey blinks up at him as he crosses the kitchen and places her breakfast in front of her. When he’s turning back to the counter for the forks and the strawberries, she says to his back, “What?”

“You can. If you want to.” He returns with the forks, with the bowl of strawberries he places between them. He taps the top of her foot and she sweeps her feet down, tucking them back under her chair, and Kylo sits. He looks across the table at her more steadily than he feels, because on the inside he’s a mess of butterflies and a samba-ing heartbeat. “I like you, too. I liked when you took care of me.”

Her face goes red. Kylo takes mercy on her, and on himself, and lowers his head as he starts to eat.

He’s barely halfway through his omelet when Rey pushes back her chair and stands. Kylo looks up, startled, at her empty plate as she comes around the table and stands right next to his chair. She’s staring down at him with a frown, but it’s not an angry frown. It’s a sort of… tight little thinking face. He likes it.

When she lifts her hand and lightly touches his bruised jaw, his breath catches in his throat.

“You really are a bit of a mess,” she murmurs. Her fingertips stroke the tender skin.

“Yeah,” Kylo breathes.

Rey bites her lip and lets her hand settle on his jaw, her thumb brushing his own lower lip. Just barely. Just enough to send sparks under Kylo’s skin. “But you’d want to be my mess.”

He is all taut muscles and thundering heart under her touch. He wants her to bend down and kiss him, take him, consume him. He wants to curl up in her warmth and stay. “I don’t want to be your mess,” he manages to say, staring into those sweet, stern hazel eyes that are still gazing at his mouth. “But I want to be your guy.”

And then she finally looks at him. Her eyes soften. Her mouth curves into a small smile. “My guy,” she says, liltingly, like she likes how the words feel on her tongue.

“Yeah,” Kylo says. “If you want.”

“Oh, Ben,” she murmurs, edging her hip between the chair and the table so she can step between his knees. “You have no idea the things I want.”

At the same time she brings her other hand to cup his face, he lifts his own hands to gently curl around her wrists. This close, even with her blockers, he can scent her, clear and sharp and focusing and perfect. “Tell me,” he rasps. “Show me. Please.”

Beautiful, beautiful Rey takes mercy on him and kisses him.

  
  
  
  


Ben decides very quickly that his Saturday nights are much, much sweeter spent in Rey’s bed than at the bar.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Don't be afraid to come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nuanceismyjam), [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/nuanceismyjam), or [Tumblr](http://nuanceismyjam.tumblr.com/)! (Which I use in that order, in terms of frequency.)


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